


five and three-quarters

by mahuika



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games)
Genre: Chickens, F/M, Kid Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-01
Updated: 2015-04-01
Packaged: 2018-03-20 18:03:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3659862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mahuika/pseuds/mahuika
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I am five and three-quarters. </p><p>It is bigger than four, which is almost a baby, but not really big like six. But I am very nearly six, and when I am it will be my spark-hands that make lightning jump like crickets, not Mama’s, and I will keep us safe from the strangers in the night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	five and three-quarters

**Author's Note:**

> Listening to: [The Cinematic Orchestra ft Patrick Watson - That Home](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wlwII_thtQand) and [Active Child - Silhouette](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETon5Cj5Ghg)

I am five and three-quarters.

It is bigger than four, which is almost a baby, but not really big like six. When you’re six you’re almost full-grown, tall and strong like a giant. When you’re six you can make grass-whistles and jump over streams and whisper sparks into your hands to protect you from knights.

But I am very nearly six, so I think it shan’t matter. Mama says I am very clever, anyway, even though I only have three-quarters. I asked mama how many numbers she was, and it was big; the size of the haystack down at the Burrows if numbers were made of hay and not littler numbers. I told her she must certainly be Very Old; older than even the dragons that live behind the hills.

Mama said I was quite horrid, but her face looked like it was thinking of smiling, and when Papa scooped me up and held me close I felt his laugh, and when I lay my fingers between the white lines on his throat I feel it there too, humming beneath my hand like a bird’s wings.

I am very nearly six, and when I am it will be _my_ spark-hands that make lightning jump like crickets, not Mama’s, and I will keep us safe from the strangers in the night.

\- -

I have three eggs, and I hold them in the cradle of my skirt between my crossed knees like they’re a baby brother. They’re round and brown like stones. I love my eggs, but there’s mud up my boots and the ends of my dress and mama will be so cross – _another one ruined, again; I’ll have to dress you in a potato sack_ – and I think I may cry.

It’s cold, colder than I wanted it to be, and the sun’s only been awake an hour so everything _looks_ cold as well. The colours are only blue-greys and brown, sad colours I don’t know the names of, like the sky is still sleepy and doesn’t know it’s morning-time already. My chickens know it’s morning, though. They cluck to each other, scratching through the squelchy dirt and hunching their feathers up like hoods against the cold. I rub my fist at my eyes.

There are footsteps behind us, and Papa crouches beside me in the mud. He looks very serious, but he looks very serious most of the time so I don’t think he’s too mad. “What has happened?” He asks.

“I’m very muddy.”

“I see.”

“I found eggs.”

“Breakfast, then?” And he tucks his arms under my knees and around my back and lifts me as he stands. I hold my eggs close, safe like a hug, and don’t mind too much at being carried like I’m still little.

“Mama is going to be very cross. Will I – have to wear a potato sack?” I think I may cry again.

“If you look sad enough,” Papa’s voice is low and very grave, sharing a secret, “she will not be cross.”

I want to ask him if this is how he does it, but the words have jumped away from my tongue like frogs. I smile at him instead and lean my head on his chest so he knows I love him. I think I can feel the magic lines, warm beneath his shirt and I nestle my head further, very carefully, so he knows I love them too. Mama kisses them when they hurt, sometimes, and I asked him if the kisses help. _Your mother seems to think so,_ he’d whispered back, another secret. But not too secret, I think, because it made Mama laugh and she kissed him again, his mouth this time. It made my nose wrinkle and I had to go outside.

“This one’s cracked.” I hold one of my eggs up so Papa can see. He inspects it carefully, green eyes like mine but greener, and he gives a satisfied nod as we walk. “It will make a fine breakfast if we use it this morning. “ I nod like he did, smooth my hand over the crack and kiss it in case it helps. I put the egg back with her brothers.

“Broken things may still have a place. A use.” I look up again at the sound of my father’s voice; the sound mama says is her favourite in the world. I think it might be mine too. Now it sounds like a lesson is in his voice, something I should remember, but he’s very warm and it’s an awfully long way up the hill to home, and I think he wouldn’t mind if I closed my eyes a little.

\- -

“What will I be when I grow up, Mama?” I twist away from the clouds and roll over so my belly is pressed to hers, resting my head over my arms. She lets go of the plait she was making in my hair and smiles at me.

“Anything,” she answers, and taps my nose. I scrunch it up like I’m a rabbit. “What would you like to be?”

I think about it very carefully. “A cow, I think.”

Mama laughs and throws her head back onto the ground beneath us. “A very good thing to be!” Her hair is ink staining the grass; I tug a handful and pull it to mine, twining them together so we match. “What shall you be when _you_ grow up, Mama?”

“Hm. A dragon!” She pitches forward and traps me in her arms, her dragon’s breath warming my cheek with flame-kisses, and I’m laughing now too.

“I will be a dragon as well!”

“Oh _no,_ my little love, you’re far too small! You’re still a baby!”

“I’m not!” I throw my wings around her neck so she sees. “I can’t be a baby. I’m five and three-quarters! I shall breathe fire and stomp very loudly and everyone will be afraid of me. Are you going to have a new baby? A little brother. He can be an egg!”

“No, love,” and she is still laughing. “You’re our last.”

I turn my face into her neck and burrow into her, a grub now and not a dragon. “I can’t be your last. Last means there’s another first, but I’m first.”

Mama is quiet and I can’t see her eyes, but her hands curl into fists in the blue wool of my jumper.

“Are you hungry? I’m _starving._ ” She puts her hands on my shoulders and leans back to smile at me, all bright eyes and bright ink hair, red paint red like the ribbon around my father’s wrist. Mama tickles me under the chin. “Race you to the larder?”

\- -

I am making a flower crown to go on my father’s head. Big daisies, white like his hair. Yellow middles like the corn we throw for the chickens. Sunny-side eggs but for weaving, not eating.

It’s quieter out here, and I can’t hear the arguing much unless I listen really hard. I can’t remember what they’re arguing about, but they’re as angry as each other; hot words that bite like spitting oil on my skin. They won’t notice if I sit in the garden until it’s over.

I dig my thumbnail into a fat green stalk, slide another stalk through the hole. It patches up the gap and makes it green again, like there wasn’t a hole to begin with, like it wasn’t hurt at all. I press the flowers to my lips and tell them my secrets.

Tell them about the things I see that they don’t know I see – the papers with faces torn down in the village, burnt – the dust path that winds to the road speckled red like a warbler’s egg – the men Mama turns my face away from when we walk to a new home; the ones my father leads away. He goes to speak with them, and he comes back wiping his sword.

These are my secrets; mine and my Mama’s and my Papa’s, and I will hold them close like the brother I won’t have and I will protect them from everyone, from the strangers on the road and the voices at the door and the things that make them scream in their sleep.

It’s very quiet now, and I loop the last daisy to the first; a ring of egg-flowers for wearing, not eating. I get up, brush the dirt from my dress and carry the crown inside. Mama is gone, but Papa is standing at the table, his knuckles hard and white where he grips the back of a chair. His eyes are dark, but they go very soft when he sees me, and I think he will be alright.

“I made this for you,” and I hold the ring of flowers up to him. The corner of his mouth is trying to smile, but he kneels before me and bows his head, very grave. I place it carefully atop his head, tucking it into his hair until I’m sure it will stay. He looks up at me, catches my hands in his and brings them to his lips.

“Thank you,” he says gently, and stands. My hands are still in his and I kick off my shoes and step onto his feet, matching my toes with the white lines beneath them. “Why were you fighting with Mama?”

He begins to step from side to side, slowly moving us around the table as he thinks. “We were not fighting. We were…disagreeing.”

“Mama says disagreeing is fighting without getting punched.”

Papa snorts and moves his arms under mine, looping his hands at my back. “She would say that.”

“Were you very angry?”

“Sometimes it is easier to be angry than to be afraid. But you have no need of being either.”

“I’m going to make a flower crown for uncle when he comes.”

“Which one?”

“All of them.”

Mama strides through the door then, but she stops when she sees us. Her face is a smile and her eyes are love and she only needs three steps before she’s with us, and she wraps one arm tight around my father to kiss him, and her other hand comes to rest above his on my back. I think they’re both saying sorry, but their mouths are still stuck together and I don’t know how they can understand each other with all the kissing going on.

Papa lifts me into his arms; Mama tugs at his flower crown and laughs and tightens her arms around us both so she can hold us close. I can put an arm around each of their necks if I try quite hard, and all of a sudden I feel very safe; their foreheads together above mine, my heart calling to theirs and saying everything’s alright (safe little bird it's alright little bird) and I feel as if nothing is wrong and nothing could be wrong, not ever.

I am not clever like I think I am.

It goes wrong.

\- -

I breathe flames with my dragon breath, but it doesn’t work; it’s just breath and my fingers are just fingers, not cricket-lightning, not sparks or ice or anything because I am NOT SIX, I am FIVE AND THREE-QUARTERS and I am too little too little to do anything but lay here cry feel Mama’s weight on my back –

I curl my fist into my mouth – _quiet,_ quiet like the mice in the haystack down at the Burrows, quiet like Mama told me to be when I was three and four and five. I can’t find my eyes, just tears; I squeeze my eyelids shut against the floor of my room, feel the red leach into the wood-grain beneath my face, red like the ribbon around Papa’s wrist, pressing lines into my skin like the lines on Papa’s skin –

Who’s not here because he’s never here, not on this day of every other week when he leaves before the sun wakes up and doesn’t get back until late, old pack full of herbs and dried meat; late when I pretend to be sleeping, even when he comes in, leans down to press his cheek to mine, eyelashes tickling; butterfly kisses against my skin.

Mama is sticky-warm against my back.

In the spring one of the chickens was very ill; egg-bound, Mama said. She was too full up with love for her egg that she made it too big, got stuck. Mama twisted her neck like a wet towel. She was very still after that, my chicken. I told Mama it looked like she was sleeping. She stroked my hair, let me pat her.

 _It looks like she is,_ she’d said. _But she’s not sleeping, sweetheart. She’s gone, and she can’t come back now._ I thought I should cry, so I tried to. But we had lots of other chickens, and I helped Mama pluck and clean her, and said I wanted to bury the bones in the garden when we were done.

I think Mama is not-sleeping.

It feels like a long time until I hear a noise at the door; long enough that I think it’s nearly dark, and Mama and I are cold, and even the soft leather of her coat above and around me doesn’t keep me warm, and my dress is stuck to my back and stiff and I can’t tell if they’re my father’s footsteps or someone else's.

I want to cry again, or call out to him, but I don’t know if that thud is a pack hitting the floor or a chair being kicked over; that hiss a voice or a sword being drawn. I want Papa; want him to take me in his arms and away from the floor and the damp and the buried chicken-bones and I should be big and brave but I don’t want – I _don’t want it_ to be those people coming back, or still here never left knives waiting in the dark –

I squeeze my eyes shut again and wait.

Because I am not brave.

I am not big.

I am five and three-quarters, which is almost a baby.

It is certainly too little to save my mother.

 


End file.
